50 Fun Facts About George Orwell

What was George Orwell's real name?

He adopted the pen name in 1932 for his first book so that his family would not be embarrassed by his tramping.

In which country was Orwell born?

His father worked in the Opium Department of the Indian Civil Service; his birthplace bungalow in Motihari opened as a museum in 2015.

Orwell's father worked in which branch of the Indian Civil Service?

Richard Blair was a sub-deputy opium agent overseeing production and storage of opium for sale to China.

Which future writer did Orwell first meet at St Cyprian's prep school in Eastbourne?

Connolly later edited Horizon and published several of Orwell's essays; Orwell came second to him in the Harrow History Prize.

When Orwell first met his childhood sweetheart Jacintha Buddicom, what was he doing?

Asked why, he explained that you are noticed more upside down than the right way up.

Which famous novelist taught Orwell French at Eton?

Huxley's Brave New World and Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four are still read side by side as rival dystopias.

After leaving Eton, Orwell joined which force?

He sailed in October 1922 and trained at Mandalay; his grandmother lived in Moulmein.

Which two of Orwell's essays draw directly on his years as a policeman in Burma?

He also turned the experience into the novel Burmese Days, published in 1934.

What did Orwell have tattooed on each knuckle in Burma?

Rural Burmese still wear similar tattoos, believed to protect against bullets and snake bites.

Which tropical illness did Orwell contract at Katha in 1927, leading to his leave in England?

He used the leave to rethink his life and resigned from the police to become a writer, effective March 1928.

When Orwell went 'native' as a tramp in London's East End, what name did he use?

He was imitating Jack London, whose The People of the Abyss he admired.

In Paris, Orwell took a menial job doing what in a fashionable hotel on the rue de Rivoli?

The experience fills the first half of Down and Out in Paris and London.

Which poet, then at Faber & Faber, rejected the manuscript of Down and Out in Paris and London?

Eliot rejected Orwell again a decade later when Faber turned down Animal Farm.

Why did Orwell deliberately get himself arrested for being drunk and disorderly at the end of 1931?

The Bethnal Green police did not consider it worth a jail sentence and released him after two days in a cell.

Which publisher issued Down and Out in Paris and London for a £40 advance in 1933?

Gollancz's newly founded house was an outlet for radical and socialist writing.

The 'Orwell' in George Orwell was taken from what?

He chose it as 'a good round English name'; George came from the patron saint of England.

Orwell's job at Booklovers' Corner, a Hampstead second-hand bookshop, informed which novel?

He worked afternoons, wrote in the mornings and lodged with the shop's Esperantist owners.

In Wigan in 1936, Orwell lodged in dirty rooms above what?

He also went down Bryn Hall coal mine and read public health records in the local library.

The Road to Wigan Pier was published in 1937 for which subscription scheme?

The publisher added a nervous preface to the second half, which argues for socialism, while Orwell was away in Spain.

Orwell's research for The Road to Wigan Pier put him under surveillance by which body from 1936?

Its dossier concluded that his 'Bohemian' dress sense revealed he was a Communist.

Whom did Orwell marry on 9 June 1936?

They met at a party thrown by his landlady, a psychology student at University College London.

Which American novelist told Orwell over dinner in Paris that fighting in Spain was 'sheer stupidity'?

Miller thought Orwell's ideas about defending democracy were 'all baloney', but Orwell went anyway.

Which militia did Orwell join in the Spanish Civil War?

He joined because his Independent Labour Party contacts were linked to it, and later found himself branded a fascist by the Communist press.

Where was Orwell hit by a sniper's bullet in Spain in 1937?

He towered over the Spanish fighters and had been warned about standing at the parapet.

How tall was Orwell?

His height and size-12 boots made him a source of amusement in the Spanish trenches.

Which book came out of Orwell's experiences in the Spanish Civil War?

It was a commercial flop in 1938 and only found readers in the 1950s after his later successes.

Back at his cottage in Wallington after Spain, Orwell named his poodle puppy after whom?

His cockerel was called Henry Ford; the cottage's rose garden he planted still survives.

Orwell wrote Coming Up for Air while wintering for his health in which country?

The novelist L. H. Myers secretly paid for the six-month stay in a villa outside Marrakesh.

During the Second World War, Orwell produced Eastern Service broadcasts for which organisation?

He resigned in September 1943 after a report confirmed that few Indians actually listened.

Which fairy tale did Orwell adapt for radio six days before he left the corporation in 1943?

He was fascinated by the fairy-tale genre and put 'A Fairy Story' on the title page of Animal Farm.

Orwell's regular personal column in Tribune, begun in December 1943, was called what?

He was the paper's literary editor from November 1943 to early 1945 and wrote over 80 book reviews there.

Why did Orwell's regular publisher refuse Animal Farm in 1944?

Jonathan Cape also backed out after consulting a Ministry of Information official later exposed as a Soviet agent.

What was the name of the son the Orwells adopted in 1944?

After his wife's death he refused to give the baby up, and Richard was later raised by Orwell's sister Avril.

What did Orwell salvage from the rubble in a wheelbarrow after a V-1 bomb hit his flat in 1944?

He had only just moved the collection to London from the cottage at Wallington.

How did Orwell's first wife die in March 1945?

Orwell was in Europe as a war correspondent at the time and had been given little warning of the operation.

On what date was Animal Farm published in Britain?

American publication followed a year later; the book's success made Orwell a sought-after figure.

On which Scottish island did Orwell write Nineteen Eighty-Four?

He led a boating trip there that nearly drowned his party in the notorious Gulf of Corryvreckan.

What was the name of the abandoned farmhouse where Orwell lived while writing Nineteen Eighty-Four?

He moved there with his two-year-old son in May 1946, treating the boy 'as a mini-adult'.

Which new drug was imported to treat Orwell's tuberculosis in 1948, with a request reaching the Minister of Health?

He developed toxic epidermal necrolysis, a rare side effect, and the course had to be stopped.

In 1949, Orwell gave a list of writers he considered pro-communist to which Foreign Office unit?

The list, handed to Celia Kirwan, was not published until 2003.

Sonia Brownell, whom Orwell married in 1949, is believed to be the model for which character?

The wedding took place in his hospital room at University College Hospital, with David Astor as best man.

How old was Orwell when he died in January 1950?

A pulmonary artery ruptured, a complication of the tuberculosis he had hidden for years.

Where is Orwell buried?

Central London graveyards had no space; David Astor found the plot at All Saints' churchyard.

Which modern writer did Orwell say influenced him most, for telling a story 'without frills'?

He listed Shakespeare, Swift, Fielding, Dickens and Flaubert among the writers he never tired of.

Which essay did The Observer's editor David Astor hand to every new recruit?

The essay's six rules end with: break any of these rules sooner than say anything outright barbarous.

Orwell may have coined which geopolitical term in his 1945 essay 'You and the Atom Bomb'?

He imagined an epoch 'as horribly stable as the slave empires of antiquity'.

Which luxury grocer's tea did Orwell have sent to him in Catalonia?

His 1946 essay 'A Nice Cup of Tea' laid down his eleven rules for making it.

Orwell's 1946 essay describing an imagined ideal British pub is titled what?

Wetherspoon later named a chain of pubs after it; Orwell himself despised drinkers of lager.

Which Orwell essay, shelved in 1946 as awkward during rationing, was finally published with an apology in 2019?

It included Orwell's own marmalade recipe and described the national diet as 'perhaps slightly barbarous'.

In 2008, The Times ranked Orwell where among the greatest British writers since 1945?

The adjective 'Orwellian' and coinages like 'doublethink' and 'thoughtcrime' are all now dictionary words.